Cso Leaves Orient On High Note

April 13, 1986|By John von Rhein, Music critic.

HONG KONG — The Chicago Symphony Orchestra could hardly have asked for a warmer expression of joi-kin.

That is the way most Chinese here say goodbye, although the extended ovation that the capacity audiences at the City Hall Concert Hall lavished on the musical visitors from Chicago after the final two concerts of their Far East tour Friday and Saturday seemed to carry with it the idea that this was not a farewell as much as a heartfelt invitation to return at the orchestra`s earliest convenience.

In fact, 1990 has already been targeted as the year the CSO will undertake its third trek through the Orient. Conductor Georg Solti says he is pleased that the orchestra has strengthened its internatonal reputation with these 15 concerts, adding that he is looking forward as much as the Symphony members to making music again in Japan and Hong Kong. The developing cultural community such as greeted the CSO here would gladly applaud the maestro`s sentiments.

For this reviewer three concerts will remain in memory as highlights of a tour that began in Japan 21 days ago. Solti`s program of Haydn and Bruckner symphonies in the acoustically and architecturally splendid Symphony Hall in Osaka, Japan, was an ideal melding of energies--the musicians`, the auditorium`s and the audience`s. The opening tour concert in Tokyo`s Bunka Kaikan (Mozart and Mahler) under Solti had a super-attentive audience breathing the music along with the players, and TV cameras fortunately were present to record the taut intensity of the performance for videodisc.

It is interesting that Daniel Barenboim, who directed arguably the worst concert of the tour--a Tchaikovsky-Wagner program featuring a tired orchestra fighting mannered interpretation in a mediocre suburban-Tokyo auditorium--also presided over one of the finest.

Before a raptly submissive crowd in the Tokyo Bunka Kaikan he invested the Schubert ``Unfinished`` and Beethoven ``Eroica`` symphonies with extraordinary beauty and interpretive depth. Again it is important to stress how greatly the audience`s involvement in the music-making, as shown by their intense silence and concentraton, added to the effort that conductor and players were willing to put forth.

Solti, who is rarely in the audience at a Chicago Symphony concert back home, attended Barenboim`s concert in Hong Kong Friday night and applauded as loudly as those seated around him.

As Solti had learned three nights previously, the intimate Concert Hall cannot accommodate the CSO`s maximum power output without blasting listeners nearly into adjacent Victoria Harbor. Barenboim clearly had learned from his colleague`s unfortunate example. In neither the Schubert Eighth Symphony nor the Beethoven Third did he attempt to force the sound or to adjust the dynamic scale beyond what is sanctioned in the score.

Neither his Schubert nor his Beethoven very much resembled the performances he had conducted earlier on the tour. His ``Unfinished,`` taken very deliberately, with a dynamic scale that often sank to a faint whisper, breathed an almost mystical resignation.

Barenboim`s ``Erocia`` was tauter and faster in the outer movements than before--all the better to draw bolder expressive extremes, with a more consciously molded Funeral March whose grief was sublimated into stoic nobility.

A United Airlines 747 bearing all 108 Chicago Symphony members is due to arrive at O`Hare International Airport Sunday evening. Subscription concerts will resume next week at Orchestra Hall.